


a veritable fraud

by seventhstar



Category: Arabella - Georgette Heyer, HEYER Georgette - Works
Genre: F/M, Identity Reveal, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 14:51:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18662608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: “She’s a fraud!”Even a saintly man might have been pressed to contain himself, if a man he disliked burst into his study without so much as a by your leave. Mr. Beaumaris was not a saintly man, and made no attempt to call to heel Ulysses when the dog attacked Mr. Epworth’s trousers.“I did not realize we had an appointment,” Mr. Beaumaris said. He gave Mr. Epworth a sardonic look, but Mr. Epworth was too overwrought to see it.“By God, that scheming little baggage! She is a veritable fraud, Beaumaris! She isn’t a heiress! She’s got no more than a thousand pound portion! I could wring her neck!”





	a veritable fraud

**1.**

“She’s a fraud!”

Even a saintly man might have been pressed to contain himself, if a man he disliked burst into his study without so much as a by your leave. Mr. Beaumaris was not a saintly man, and made no attempt to call to heel Ulysses when the dog attacked Mr. Epworth’s trousers.

“I did not realize we had an appointment,” Mr. Beaumaris said. He gave Mr. Epworth a sardonic look, but Mr. Epworth was too overwrought to see it.

“By God, that scheming little baggage! She is a veritable fraud, Beaumaris! She isn’t a heiress! She’s got no more than a thousand pound portion! I could wring her neck!”

“Have you read the paper today, Epworth?” That ‘a veritable fraud’ seemed to be a phrase that opposed itself, Mr. Beaumaris forbore saying, as Mr. Epworth would not understand it, and he had no wish to prolong the interview.

“What?”

“The paper, sir!” Mr. Beaumaris had read the paper, and it was sitting on his desk, folded so that the relevant portion was visible. He handed it to Mr. Epworth, who read it, and grew quite pale. He was not a brave man by nature, only a stupid one, and he was not so stupid as to forget that Mr. Beaumaris was a crack shot, and even worse, capable of making Mr. Epworth persona non grata in every drawing room in London.

“I did not know you were engaged!” Mr. Epworth croaked. “I wish you happy!”

“Thank you.”

“But see here, I tell you she lied, and can prove it! No one could blame you for crying off!”

“Come now, Epworth! You must know that I have been enlightened to the truth of the matter all along!” At Mr. Epworth’s flabbergasted expression, which made him look ridiculous, and which Mr. Beaumaris could not help but think would amuse Arabella as much as it did himself, he laughed. “Recollect, if you will, just who vouched for her fortune in the first place?”

**2.**

“Oh, yes! It was dreadful of him, don’t you think? I suffered terribly,” Arabella said. Her parlor was full of ladies who were uninclined to leave, despite the strictures of politeness, until she confirmed from them what they had heard: that Miss Tallant was not rich at all.

“I don’t know how you endured it,” Miss Worbley, who had been thrown over for Arabella by a very promising gentlemen, said. “I could not! To have everyone dancing attendance on you, merely because they thought you were rich! Insupportable!”

“It distressed me considerably. To have to suspect every friend of mine of hanging out for my fortune, and to have to turn down so many proposals, I could hardly endure it.”

“P-proposals?”

“I once had five in one week! Poor Mr. Epworth tried three times! And of course I was obliged to refuse them all, as I could not in good conscience deceive them.”

Several ladies thought to themselves that they could have very well deceived them, and slept soundly every night after besides.

“But it backfired terribly on Mr. Beaumaris,” Arabella added, for she could not forgive Mr. Beaumaris for not having the decency to warn her in advance, “for I was obliged to refuse him, too!”

**3.**

“You are really going to marry the girl!”

“I am, as you have asked no less than six times.”

“But she’s poor as a church mouse.”

“She is from a very respectable family.”

“She’s quite mad!”

“She has an excess of Christian spirit.”

“She’s pretty enough, but not at all what people will expect of you!”

“I never do what people expect of me, Fleetwood! It would bore me excessively if I did!”

**4.**

“But Miss Tallant, I don’t understand! Why should Mr. Beaumaris say such a thing about you?”

“I am afraid we quarreled!”

“But Mr. Beaumaris would never quarrel with a lady!”

“Well, that is my fault. You see, my uncle’s carriage broke down on the way to London, and we were obliged to seek shelter at the nearest house, which was Mr. Beaumaris’s hunting box. And I am afraid I was quite uncivil to him!”

“Why?”

“Because he called me a fortune hunter, and also, I perhaps thought him a very useless kind of man!”

“Miss Tallant!”

“But now I see that he is very good, despite his neckcloth, and will marry him after all.”

**5.**

“You won’t mind, will you?” Arabella asked, later, when she and Mr. Beaumaris were alone in his drawing room, gloved hands clasped. “Marrying a poor and ordinary girl?”

“Money I have,” he replied, “and you are not ordinary in any sense of the word.”

“I am sure any of Papa’s daughters would have done what I did.”

“I doubt any of them would have pretended to be an heiress, purely to give me a set-down for—what did you say—being a useless kind of man?”

“You have to admit that men so often are!”

She laid her head on his shoulder, and Mr. Beaumaris, so exacting about his clothes, put his arm around her and did not try to dissuade her. No doubt she would ruin waistcoats with crying, and insist he carry dirty animals and dirtier children, and if he was fortunate, she might wrinkle a shirt or too while she embraced him.

“I will do my best to be the sort of wife you like.”

“You won’t—and I would not have bothered if I thought for a moment you would!”

Arabella was on the point of a retort, but Mr. Beaumaris, who was so well-mannered, had no scruples about being unchaperoned with her in his house—or about taking her into his arms to kiss her, to impress upon her what sort of husband he intended to be.

**6.**

He made her a wedding present of a fund established for charity works, to do with as she liked, in the hopes that he would not have to squire her about while she abated the plights of the Jemmys and Leaky Pegs of the world.

Alas, he inevitably did. And if Arabella on occasion used dandelions for earrings, merely to see if it would become a fashion, it was not to see if she could do it; it was only to make him laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> never written georgette heyer fanfic before (tho i've written a lot of regency aus in a different fandom) so hopefully it's not too dreadful :)
> 
> thanks for reading! comments are appreciated


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